Since I moved into my place, I have been taking a close look at my budget. One line item I think I can do away with is a monthly trash service. It costs $14/mo for trash with no recycling and $18 for trash and recycling.

I was thinking I would just do all the waste myself, and that this would be a great way to encourage me to have as small a trash footprint as possible.

So i set myself up with several recycling bins, a compost bin, a trash bin and a Donations bin. All are lined up in the kitchen.

The recycling stuff I take out each time I go shopping in town, which is easy. The compost gets dumped into my compost pile when it's full. I take the Donations out when it gets full.

Trash is the tricky one. I pay for an RV campground membership and i do my laundry at those. I try to remember to take my bagged trash out when i go, and to use the dumpsters (I am already paying for it, so why not?).

I look forward to actually seeing how small an amount of trash I actually create each month. I have to retrain DH to compost things like coffee grinds and food wastes.

It's not like $18 is a huge amount to spend each month, but i think of it as an extra $216 over a year.

That is so cool Jilly and something ALL of us should be doing! How much stuff do we put into the waste stream without even thinking about it! If we all had to focus closely on what we did, we would really make a big impact on the world.

Good for you, you are quite an inspiration

Here we have bins for plastic glass and metal, then paper-and-cardboard. So we separate that all out. But we do NOT compost which really we should. So I will work on that next.

Our bin men come every week anyway. One week they take rubbish; the next they take stuff for recycling. They provide the bins.I am not 100% convinced that the items really are recycled, though. Maybe I'm just a cynic. They take card/ paper and plastic & glass bottles.My Mum's bin men take (clean) food cans as well.We used to compost & I really think that we should do so again.

Edited by PDM (12/17/0903:35 PM)Edit Reason: typo

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"The secret of success is constancy to purpose" - Benjamin Disraeli.

I love composting and it is so easy to do, unless you live in an apartment and do not have access to a yard. In apartments it's easier to make a worm bin, which is HUGE fun, BTW.

I love that all this stuff I throw in a pile, that would normally be waste for a landfill, becomes very high grade garden soil, chock full of nutrients, come spring.

One of my neighbors also composts his food wastes, which I was thrilled to see. He was one of the people who gave me a big bag of beer cans. He also keeps chickens for eggs, which I'd be thrilled to try some time. (Keeping chickens, that is. In my fantasy there are also a couple of cute goats).

I have recently had to add a bin for redemption bottles and a bin for 'other metals', like brass and steel, that I can recycle.

Once I get my scale from storage in CA, then I won't have to guess so much at things.

I will keep looking out for ways to make my actual 'trash' pile smaller and smaller.

I think I will start a recycling log about all this and track the weights.

Jilly, when your composting, try to put some manure or green things in there. It must reach a temp very high in order to decompose things in there, and manure will help it reach that temp. (I'm not sure I remember the exact temp,) but if you do not, you should use some kind of fertilizer when you use it in the ground or in a pot. Also, it will cook faster and more evenly if you turn it every few days or when you get the chance.

You can find manure easily enough. Find someplace that keeps horses or chickens or turkeys, and ask them if you can muck out the stables or cages or whatever.

Bat guana is the hottest manure. I don't like to use it because you can only use a tiny bit. poultry manure is really good to use, but I like to use horse manure because you can use a lot of it, and the more manure in your compost the better it will be.Just make sure it has completely decomposed before you use it. Also, if it's not decomposed, it will take nitrogin from the soil in the process of decomposing, thereby taking nutrients from your plantings.

Look it up. That way, you will be sure to have all the info you need, in case I left something out. I used to do all these things, but now in an apt complex, and in the city, not so much! It's my dream to live in the country and be able to do all the things I used to be able to do.

Well, I hope you weren't insulted. Most people don't know these things.

I had a job once, and my title was "INformation Coordinator, at the Austin Community Gardens", and I actually did everything, but ai also had to take calls where gardeners would ask a question and I had to either know the answer or look it up and call them back with the answer! So I have like, encyclopedias in my head about organic gardening! BTW, it was the most gratifying job I ever had. I did that for 3 years until Reagan stopped the CETA program.

Tweetymom, my neighbors here have chickens, maybe they would let me have some of their guano.

I wish I could use my pet poop but i know that isn't exactly sanitary. I have seen pet poop decomp bins in places like PetSmart; I should check into that. You don't end up with manure, but at the least the poop returns to the soil instead of bagged and added to the landfills.

In my dream home, I'd have composting toilets too.

I wish I could totally eliminate all my trash. I'd like to find uses for everything.